The tone of the third and fourth lines of the poem is somewhat sad in the way that it presents the reader with the image of a time long gone and suggests that the escritoire is no longer used or noticed, despite its antique beauty. The next line then contains a simile relevant in that the woman could be crying due to the futility of the escritoire in today’s society. Also, a crying woman would probably draw some attention. Therefore, the simile may also be a form of foreshadowing in that no attention is being paid to the “crying woman”. At this point the poem has reached a climax as a metaphor and then a simile of a battleship at war quicken the poem’s pace after the significantly quieter image of a woman rocking and shuddering. The launching phrase of the poem’s seventh line - “For all the world…” – portrays the surprise experienced by the persona of the poem at seeing what is then described quickly and with excitement for most of the rest of the first stanza, thus depicting the narrator’s excitement and the magnitude of the occurrence. However, the first stanza then comes to an end more slowly with lines 15 and 16, which bring to the reader’s attention that the television is relevant to the poem. The television’s significance is also revealed at this point in the poem – the “gloomiest corner of the room” is “far from the television”. Therefore, most attention must generally be directed towards the television.
The second stanza of ‘A Singular Metamorphosis’ is initiated very differently from the first. The words “I alone,” are left isolated in the middle of the page, representing the seclusion of the poem’s persona in being the only one to notice the eccentric and bizarre display of nature. Howard Nemerov then makes use of repetition in this stanza in lines 18 and 19 of the poem: “To my belief, remarked the remarkable/Transaction above remarked.” Here, the use of repetition emphasizes to the reader the peculiarity of the poem’s persona being the only one seeing the incident despite it being so incredibly noticeable. Nemerov then engages the reader’s senses by further describing the scene. This aids in highlighting the contrast between television and natural wonder. This is because, although the television is only visual and audible, the transformation of the escritoire involves more of our senses.
Nemerov then continues the poem in a humorous way as he describes the program being played on the television. In the twenty-fourth line the poet makes reference to Narcissus, a Greek mythological character who fell in love with his own image as reflected in a pool of water, by naming a character in the television show “Narcisse”. This indication is relevant as the people watching the television may just as well be watching themselves as the connotation is that society makes us all the same. The parallel of the Greek Narcissus and the policewoman Narcisse also is appropriate due to the vanity of both characters. This aspect is once again made amusing by lines twenty-seven to twenty-nine of the poem where it is mentioned that “Narcisse” is winning by “knowing her Montalets from Capagues,/Cordilleras from Gonorrheas, in/The Plays of Shapesmoke Swoon of Avalon,” These mistaken correlations are sardonic in that, in her vainness, “Narcisse” is led to believe that she is learned.
The poem’s persona then spends some time describing the television show, making the first few lines of this second stanza somewhat ironic as the persona himself appears to have been drawn in by the television, thus demonstrating the power television has over society. Throughout this stanza, Nemerov also turns modern society into something ugly and nonsensical. In the twenty-fourth line the policewoman (“Narcisse”) is described as “cultivated”. The connotation here is that society has made everyone the same, controlled and somewhat pre-packaged, unlike the beauty and wonder of what is going on with the escritoire, away from anyone’s attention, which is bursting into life and magnificence as oppose to being grown slowly, and uninterestingly. The twenty-sixth line of the poem also implies that society has changed everything: “Taken the sponsors for ten thousand greens”. Here, society has even altered language and made it graceless. The stanza ends with a quote from William Shakespeare's play ‘King Lear’ (“A tygers hart in a players painted hide/If ever you saw one.”) which has the indication of someone dressed up as someone else. This implies that, unlike nature, we feel the need to hide our true selves by playing our part in society.
The final stanza of ‘A Singular Metamorphosis’ is much shorter than the other two, with slower pace and more moving tone. Here, Nemerov describes the enduring scene of the escritoire, hidden by the nature which has grown on and around it and the apparent ignorance of the all the poem’s characters but the persona. The connotation here is that while the television gets switched off, true wonder survives – although we may not notice it.
Ultimately, ‘A Singular Metamorphosis’ is a poem which, in its entirety, leads us to the conclusion that our ability to perceive true wonder has been devastated by modern society. The poet, Howard Nemerov, shows us this through the use of contrasting forms of pace, imagery and diction to describe a scene in which something natural and fantastic goes unnoticed due to something of modern society which is dull, cliché and lifeless.
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